At that time OUP had two publishing offices in the UK, one in Oxford (the academic Clarendon Press) and one in London, at Amen House. Amen House was responsible for publications aimed at a general readership, including Oxford Paperbacks, the series in which the UK edition of the book was to appear. The London Publisher, Geoffrey Cumberledge, was interested but pessimistic: 'Berlin . . . is brilliant but his output is very small and his performance is worse than his promise.'
In I 9 58 Berlin gave his celebrated inaugural lecture as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory in Oxford, 'Two Concepts of Liberty', and in 1959 his Robert Waley Cohen Memorial Lecture, 'John Stuart Mill and the Ends of Life'. Both of these thereafter start to appear as constituents of the volume, by 1960 hyperbolically if provisionally entitled 'Collected Writings' by the New York office.
In reply to an enquiry from New York early that year about progress, Colin Roberts, Secretary (that is, head) of OUP, writing from the Clarendon Press, quotes a letter from Berlin, the first communication from him represented in the file:
Alas, my Introduction to the paperback on liberty is not just a question of a willing typist - I wish it were - last-minute corrections are my metier as you know too well, but it is not that that is delaying me. I should like to write a preface - more a postface - in the way of discussing and, so far as I can, replying to the various points and objections which all three essays1 have encountered one way and another - not indeed by name and address, but in fairly general terms. This I cannot do for a while - I am a slow worker - and hope to do in summer.
In March I 961 Amen House writes to OUP's Deputy Secretary, Dan Davin, at the Clarendon Press: 'Is there the vaguest possible chance that Berlin might even have begun to work on the prefaces which he insists are necessary?' A letter from Berlin reported by Davin later that month announces that
The Three Essays have now become four - Mill being added ... As to the Introduction, I shall write it in the summer in July and August, it will have to be in the nature of a general reply to all the many and fierce objections that have been made to these essays, and are still being made in current publications, so that the Press in New York must not think they are losing something with every new reference in my reply to the critics. They will acquire at least one new potential reader (the latest onslaught is in a magazine called Dissent, which arrived yesterday)2 - so long as my opinions to my own astonishment provide a live horse for the critics to flog, it will not be too late to re-issue the essays.
Answering an enquiry from John Brown (Cumberledge's successor), Berlin's typist Olive Sheldon writes on his behalf in September that he is at work on the Introduction to a book to be
' The essay on Mill had not yet been added. At this stage the work is usually referred to as 'Three Essays on Liberty'.
г David Spitz, 'The Nature and Limits of Freedom', Dissent 8 (1961-2), 78-86.
called 'Essays on Liberty' or 'Against the Current' or 'Against the Stream'. Through her he expresses doubts about the value of the essays on J. S. Mill and on twentieth-century political ideas and suggests that they be sent to a referee. The Introduction is promised for January 1962. In November Harold Beaver of Amen House writes to Catherine Linnet in New York: 'I feel sure that Berlin is merely flapping when he wishes his material to be read.' Read it was, however, by Adam Ulam, Professor of Government at Harvard, who reported favourably, as expected, prefacing his remarks with this sound observation: 'I am not entirely in sympathy with the custom of sending the work of a reputable scholar which has a style and point of view of its own to be picked and hacked at by somebody else.'
In January 1962 Berlin writes a letter to John Brown that is worth quoting in fulclass="underline"
I am oppressed by feelings of guilt about the Introduction to the paperback containing my various essays on liberty and generally related topics. I do not believe I shall achieve this Introduction before the Summer. The reasons for this are: (1) that since it involves reading the accumulated criticisms of the various ingredients of this volume - that was the point of the new Introduction - [it] needs a good deal of time and deliberation and careful drafting of answers to objections. Critical reviews seem never to cease although I am prepared to draw a line at i January 1962 and take into consideration nothing that appears thereafter.
(2) Living the life that I do, I deliver too many lectures outside my Oxford curriculum, sit on too many committees, and generally scatter such energies as I possess in a highly uneconomic and indeed often absurd manner. In my lucid moments I regret this very much and make constant resolutions to resist invitations by undergraduate societies, and to lead a rational, i.e. more concentrated, life. But all these excellent resolutions break against the barrier, and the feeling that as a Professor I cannot refuse to tell the truth to those who make quite a good show of appearing to want to hear it. As for the committees, since they are my only excuse for going to London or abroad, I secretly cling to them even though I recognise their time- eating and energy-destroying properties.
These things being so, I know myself well enough to realise that I cannot write this Introduction in term-time - in April I shall be away both lecturing and functioning on my committees - but I shall write my piece in May or June, and you shall have it by mid-July. I felt it to be only fair to you to let you know how the matter stands - if this delays publication, then, so far as I am concerned, I shall shed no tears, but I sincerely hope that it will not interfere with your publishing plans too much.
This generates a note from Beaver to Linnet: 'Isaiah Berlin, the great cunctator, has again put off supplying the preface.'
In May Bud MacLennan of Curtis Brown asks John Brown for an advance of Јioo, and in his absence a colleague tells her that they can pay £50 or £75, 'but I do not think we can go beyond this figure'. (One wonders what OUP's estimate was of the likely sales of the book, which has remained in print and in constant demand ever since.) The contract for what was now to be called Four Essays on Liberty was signed in July, replacing an earlier contract of July 1959 with New York for Three Essays. In October John Brown writes to Sheldon Meyer in New York: 'I think we have got everything satisfactorily tied up, provided only that Berlin will produce the copy.'
Berlin writes to John Brown in February 1963 that 'the Introduction for Four Essays on Liberty is a ... complicated matter', partly because he was giving priority to another project (which, like many others, did not materialise), a book based on the 1962 Storrs Lectures at Yale, 'Three Turning-Points in the History of Political Thought'.
In March 1964 Jon Stallworthy of Amen House, by then in charge of Oxford Paperbacks, writes to Curtis Brown that 'it is over a year since we last corresponded about the Introduction for Sir Isaiah Berlin's Four Essays on Liberty and I wonder whether you could give us any news of progress on this?' The reply is that the piece will not be ready for at least another year, and OUP are asked if they wish to cancel the contract. Stallworthy writes to Peter Sutcliffe in Oxford: 'The Preface has been promised us for the best part of four years, and I think everyone - including perhaps even Berlin - realises that we shall never see it now.' Stallworthy asks Curtis Brown for permission to go ahead without it. Richard Simon of Curtis Brown replies that Berlin will definitely produce the Introduction for April i966, and that, if he doesn't, OUP may publish without it. This arrangement is accepted by Stallworthy.